Heretofore, pharmaceutical dispensing, the business of dispensing a pharmaceutical medication based upon a doctor's prescription, e.g., general retail pharmacy sites, have been structured as stand-alone operations, wherein an individual pharmacy had the capacity to fill and dispense any number of medications to a patient. A pharmacist within the retail pharmacy has the general knowledge and experience to resolve a number of discrepancies in the prescription, determine if the patient had appropriate insurance coverage, and, as necessary, formulate and dispense the prescribed medication. The trend in retail pharmaceutical operations had been to establish many identical drug stores within a network of pharmacies, so that each pharmacy within the network virtually minor imaged all the other stores within the chain. Each pharmacy within the established chain of pharmacies is stocked with identical prescriptive medications, over-the-counter and retail products, and staffed by licensed pharmacists capable of dispensing all FDA-approved medications. Such a network of pharmacies had an advantage to the operator thereof in retail establishments dispersed throughout a geographical region, wherein a patient would bring a prescription to the pharmacy counter of the local drug store and wait for a medication recently prescribed by her doctor to be dispensed. However, with the advent of today's mail order pharmaceutical services, wherein a prescription may be transmitted to the pharmacy via electronic communications, e.g., telephone, the Internet, facsimile, etc., to a call-in center, dispatched to a pharmacy within a network for filling, and mailed to the patient, many of the considerations associated with a ‘neighborhood pharmacy’ become less important. The neighborhood pharmacy's concern with stocking a large variety of drugs to meet patients' needs and delivering prescriptions to waiting patients are no longer of paramount consideration. Other factors that will make a mail order network of pharmacies more efficient and economic need to be considered.